If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Gore mod

- new introduced / discovered bugs:
Gibstages sometimes only play animations when shot
Kickfunction sometimes interferes with weaponmodel update
teleporting another monster into air sometimes stucks the teleported monster in air for a few seconds
selecting and cycling through weapons is a bit buggy again

- gib stages:
Another way of fragging, restricted to nailguns. If a monster dies, you can shoot it several times, until the corpse is shredded
to pieces. With every subsequent hit, the monster loses parts of its body or what is left of it. Imagine
that you slice an apple into small pieces before you hit it with a sledgehammer. Bring an umbrella.

- added back the new weapons
Couldn't wait to add them. Weapon selection functions are still buggy.

- added cvars:
You can now switch the new monster abilities and attacks on and off
You can now choose which of the new weapons spawns and which not
You can now determine how many gibs will spawn from fragged / killed enemies
Chasecam on player death yes or not.

- Added dismemberment and different bloody deaths to the player model
Still got trouble with the player skin colors in combination with the painskins.
As long as i'm seaarching for a solution the player body has no bloodskins.
But the limbs do have bloody gibskins already.

- ADDED OPTIONS TO MAKE DARKPLACES RENDER QUAKE PIXELISED
This is the standard rendering method in the qore.cfg now. You can read about how to make
it look like a modern shooter in the qore.cfg

- Worked on the whole multiplayer section:
Added FrikbotX
Projectiles will now be teleported, so you can shoot nails into a teleporter and the appear on the other side of it.
Player and bots have different dismemberment & frag deaths.

- added new enemies and worked on the stock ones:
Hazard Enforcer : Slime shooting Enforcer in a hazard suit.
Nogre : Fires a cloud of nails.

- Dedicated some of the death animations to specific weapons:
The gib stages only have a chance to occur if you shoot something with the nailguns.
Enemies who got killed by explosive weapons always gib completely
Enemies loose limbs when hit with shotguns or energy weapons
The Lightning Gun will either completely gib an enemy or play one of the bloody death animations, no limb loss.
All that varies from enemy to enemy. Don't expect to shoot of a shamblers arm with the single barreled shotgun.

- reduced the chance for limb loss, which makes the fights harder and severing a limb more satisfying again. Reduced the chances for bloody deaths for the same reason
Less is more. With these changes it not every monster pops into a bloody paste and convolutes the screen, the gore happens around 50% less
and that's a good thing, both for atmosphere and for balance.

- added and reworked the pain & bloodskins for :
Ogre & variant, Demon, Shambler, Soldier & variants, Dog, Shalrath, Knight, Hell Knight, Wizard, Fish
With the new skins and the painskins the fights feel more satisfying and intense.
The player body itself doesn't have painskins or bloodskins, because of issues with the selectable shirt and
colours. I'm working on it.

- increased the chance for painloops again, but only a wee bit
- reworked the Nail Ogre skin
- scaled down the gib-heads of every monster
- worked on the berserker monster to get it to work some day
- worked on the hell baron monster code (a free model by Ruin) to get it to work someday
- on certain maps the extra-pickup items won't respawn anymore
- Quake uses the old rotating weapon models and armor model when you play deathmatch
- blood splats from fragging something don't fly upwards forever, so after fraggin something, the ceiling 900 meters above it won't get painted.
- the blood splats behind a shot enemy are now looking better
- explosive weapons only randomly ignite gibs
- added preset qore.cfg and particlefont.tga files for different playstyles
(faithful to the original gameplay but with gore OR with the most kinky other stuf i added so far).
- added different skins for the different soldiers (nails/shotgun)
- added the missing dismemberment bleeding effects for the Fiend/Demon
- Metal sparks added to hit effects for Knight and Hellknight
- enemies will more often get pushed back on death
- added a batch file to start qore
- found out that the footsteps cvar didn't work as it should, fixed it
- reworked the gib velocities and mass
- increased the chainsaw damage by 20 points per frame to make it actually useful
You still need a heckton of skill to use it as a weapon
- fixed the dead-dog slide bug
- hopefully fixed the knight invulnerability bug
(not entirely sure its gone, but i shot a hundred knights without seeing it happening)

//////////
Hot to start QORE
//////////

Prerequisites:
- Buy and install Quake -http://store.steampowered.com/app/2310/QUAKE/
- Download Darkplaces - Icculus.org
- Put the Darkplaces files into your Quake 1 Folder, right where the Quake.exe is.
- extract this mod into your Quake folder, so you have ...\Quake\Qore\
- read the qore.cfg file and modify the cvars to your liking.
- Choose the particlefont.tga file that fits your choosen rendermethod and pu it into the particles folder.
- rename it to particlefont.tga
- open the qore modfolder and doubleclick qore.bat

Mind that you can only have 1 single mod with progs.dat file active.
Other mods like HD textures or model replacements should be dropped to the ID1
folder. Maybe you have to adjust the gamme / brightness, because every monitor is different.

//////////
How to update
//////////

Delete the files in your Qore folder
Copy the new fils into your Qore folder
reconfigure your qore.cfg and particlefont.tga
Start a new game.
Savegames from old versions may still contain old information and can produce unwanted behaviour of... things.

//////////
Credits:
//////////

- help from the QuakeOne.com Community
Dutch
Seven
Ceriux
Spike
Mad_Gipsy

"I would really like to post some screenshots, but i think this is an american site where i shouldn't post gory screenshots like we can in other forums."

Here in america, we love gore. Screenshots please!

I have done a lot of what you stated in previous projects, if you have any questions I'd be happy to share. My advice: use sprites for the blood splats. They're easier all around to make and code for, and don't look out of place in against the lightmap if you use darker shades of red.

Comment

Good to see more people interested in writing gameplay mods for Quake. Welcome.
One thing you should know about Quake mods: There is not much that has not been coded/done already.
People mod for this game since more than 20 years and there are uncountable mods available.

Good that you already found coding tutorials. They are perfect to learn quickly. Do more of them if needed.
There are many many tutorials available at insideqc.com: click me. You could also read open source mods to see how things can be done.
You already seem to have a very clear view of how your mod should look like. That is good and will you keep focused.

One thing you should be clear upfront:
Do you focus on vanilla Quake and its features or on more advanced engines and its extended features for your mod ?
While this was a more important question some time ago, it has become a minor important question nowadays.
Reason: Because people used to use many different engines some time ago, but now focus on only 2 or 3 engines nowadays.
And most of these engines are supporting advanced features. They blend more and more into each other feature-wise, so that they tend to look similar in some time.
If your vision can be achieved by vanilla gamecode and features, fine. If you need some more advanced things you should make yourself a picture of the engine situation today.
Anyway, it is of course best to reach your target with vanilla features. Which will be harder in some situations of course.

Your feature list is fairly easy and should be within scope for you as a beginner. I am sure you will be successful.
Have fun tinkering with Quakes gamecode and dive into a new world.
Just be careful that you do not create too much gore that you can no longer sleep at night, hehe.

Best wishes,
Seven

Comment

I'm using Darkplaces but not yet its features. All i did until now was copy & paste existing code from the source. 1998 i already played a lot of Quake after a friend of my mother showed me this game. Since then it always was one of my favourites. Back then there were ftp servers with hundreds of categorized mods, i loved to browse through the folders and to try everything new. They still are around somewhere, last time i saw them, they where hosted by the technical university of berlin (ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/pc/games/idgames2/) <- here you go. Also Planetquake was a real nice thing. Sad that they closed their doors. The same counts for the geocities sites, where a lot of Quake enthusiasts hung out. InsideQC is already an invaluable source of code and exaples of how-to-do-what for me, i patched several tutorials together and used bits from here and there in different combinations.

Unti i am a little more sure how to code i keep it simple :-) But when i have more knowledge i really want to use sprites for splats, like Dutch said. The models are somewhat too low poly for that.

Comment

You can do so much more with particles...
Using an advanced engine like Darkplaces for your mod (even showing screenshots with particle effects all over the place).

Your mod will look completely different in other engines. Why developing a mod with Darkplaces when you want to it to be vanilla ?!
You will be very disappointed in the end.
Please read my post above from 17th august again.

There will be no blood stains / decals like you see it in your video and screenshots in vanilla engines for example.
All your bloody gore will be present for a second and then vanish into thin air.
Blood trails with textured particles ? No, I am sorry.

Please, first be sure what your mod shall look like in the end. Then see what features you need to achieve it.
After that you will see what you need and walk that path.
Developing a mod with one of the most advanced engines while always using/seeing its features might be not ideal.
In the end you are stuck with a limited list of engines to support your mod. That is not a bad thing, but you have to be aware of it.

And remember, a sprite will always look the same. Everytime you spawn it, from every view angle.
While a random particle effect will always look different. Everytime. Using multiple random particle textures...

Anyway, it is good to see you progress.
Have fun tinkering with Quake.

Best wishes,
Seven

Comment

Seven
Hello Seven, i don't necessarily want it to be vanilla. I use Darkplaces and made the screenshots with it, but i also test the look and feel of this mod with standard quake particles on. When i found out how to make a .spr32 file and get it to work i was very exited and decided to use it for an entertaining hour of bloody gameplay :-)

Maybe i kick it out again, if i can't manage to make it fit into the quake particle system. I'm well aware of the fact that the sprite doesn't look good with the particle system. I'm still eperimenting a lot. by that i mean learning by trial and error, tutorials and source code. I don't want to ask every time i don't know something, only if i am absolutely stuck for more than a day, which mostly is not the case..

As for particles / sprites, i think that is a matter of taste. You are absolutely right that you can do more with particles (randomising direction/density/color), but i lack the skill yet. For example i tried to spawn particles of low density with random origins, matching the boundaries of the soldiers bbox. I ended up with 3 very dense clouds in nearly always the same location, flying nearly always into the same direction. I have to particle a lot until i can get that to work.

When i'm not experimenting, i'm writing and working on the list i posted before. And i'm happy everytime something works as intended.

Using multiple random particle textures...

I have not even the slightest clue of how to do that :-) Texturing particles?! Would you mind to tell me more or point me to a corner where i can read about it?!

Comment

If you use the program fimg (yes, spelled just like that), you can create both spr32 and spr sprites. In the properties, you can change the way they are viewed by the player. I think Oriented always maintains the same angle to the player (like rocket explosions). There are other options that will disable this, meaning you can use .spr sprites for blood and stick them on the walls and floor. Actually looks pretty good in vanilla engines if done right.

Comment

Hello Dutch, i used fimg to make the sprite. Worked on it while drinking the first coffee today and now the sprite fits more to the blood particles, both vanilla and dp/spasm. I had to darken the .spr, because it was displayed brighter than the .spr32. I didn't figure out yet how to patch sprites to a surface. I think it has something to do with not removing them for some time.
Another concern of me is, that they won't wrap around corners of the architecture, am i right with this assumption? In that case they need to be relative small, i think, so it doesn't occur to the eye so much.
And have thanks for the tip with the orientation options in fimg!

Comment

you bet! And yes you are right, smaller is better. They won't wrap around corners, that's an engine particle thing.

If the mod is mostly for single player, then you could spawn a ton of the sprites. I found that QuakeSpasm will handle well over 1000 in a given frame before packet overflow. Modern PCs should handle it fine. DM is another story, I hear that large volumes of sprites are killer on the server.

Comment

Hopefully I can bring some light into this topic.
Be aware, wall of text ahead...

Do not be confused with DarkPlaces "Quake-style particles" setting option. It is not what it sounds to be.
If you want to test your mod with vanilla particles you have to use another engine. There are several available, you already mentioned some of them.
Be sure to remember. Darkplaces particle system is different to vanilla Quake. You already see the difference when playing default DP.

Working and experimenting with sprites is always a good thing and you will learn a lot. Many of it can be adapted to regular models afterwards !
There are already Sprite based mods and total convertions available for Quake. Retroblazer comes to my mind.
If you are interested and want to learn more about them and how to do it, just say a word.
KillPixel is currently working on such a project. When you go through this forum with open eyes you will find it.

Main decision for your vision of your mod is:
Do you want to use custom textures for your particles or not.
Due to the fact that your mod is heavily focused on blood, gore and decals. And it looks like that you want to present them in a realistic way,
I recommend to use texture particles instead of vanilla dots/squares. It is hardly possible (in a sane way) to emulate blood splats/decals with sprites.
Each blood particle can spawn a random blood texture decal after touching floor/wall/ceiling which is not possible with sprites as you do not have a touch function.
And to get one you would have to spawn a huge amount of entities. Which is again not sane for blood trails for example, which produce blood continuously when they fly.
Wouldnt it look weird when your gib spits out dots and squares when flying and when those dots hit the ground a detailed sprite appears ? Bleeding half way into walls and all kind of map geometries ?
And looking at your screenshots that is exactly what you want in your blood/gore mod: Flying & bleeding gibs. Many of them !
An advanced particle system will create what you need for your mod automatically without a hustle, while a sprite solution doesnt.
The wrapping around edges is just one more feature a sprite cannot do and a decal does. Orientation and bleeding into all kind of map geometries. There are many others...

Depending on your decision you might have to focus on DP & FTE derivates. Those engines support a texture particle system.
Both use a different way of particle system/syntax. While FTE aims to support both, its main system is different to DP.

So, once you decided which path to go, you should develop your mod accordingly.
I only tell you this to prevent bad suprises later on…

I like your attitude to make your own hands dirty and do not want to ask each and everytime if you step onto new ground. That is great !

Regarding the advanced particle system/syntax from DP & FTE:
There are 2 mods that you cannot afford to miss when talking about it:
For FTE: Haze the Greats particle replacement/addon
For DP: The SMC
Both will give you hundreds of examples and a huge variety/range of different particle effects for each engine. Ready to be used.
Depending which path you want to go you should study them and you will already have half your work done.

Regarding documentation:
DP´s particle system is explained here
FTEs particle system is explained mostly by Spike himself. He is never tired to repeat himself in forums
I am almost sure that an online FTE documentation exists because I do not use FTE´s system/syntax as I am a DP only guy, but there should be one.

Once you read those documentations, you will understand what “random particle textures” mean. As you can use custom textures for all your particles shape/look/visual.
Which is common in todays games (not sprites). And textures are again almost like sprites, so using sprites has really not a benefit coding and feature wise.
The only benefit of sprites I am aware of is the possibility of its animation. When you look at old sprite games you will know what beautiful animations are possible.
Particle animation is still possible with some QC (the SMC has many examples) though.
Performance impact only counts when you have quite a lot of particles at once. Otherwise particles should not have a bigger impact compared to sprites.

Think about it and tell us your decision. So we will be able to help you further if you need support.

Best wishes,
Seven

Comment

QSS contains a copy of FTE's particle system, but there's a few specific limitations as some things didn't quite make it over.
FTE's particle system is able to import DP's effects, which should help demonstrate that FTE's particle system has greater capabilities for things. Not that anyone cares. Frankly most people find more capabilities means more work for them. People are lazy.
Anyway, you can get all three engines working with particleeffectfornum("effectinfo.forceload"); as the firstish line of worldspawn or whatever. You should also be sure to call particleeffectnum ahead of time (treat it like a precache) in order to avoid reliable/unreliable races the first time a particle is used.
You'll probably end up with puffy particles and absurd numbers of extra network messages, but (except for csqc) DP gives no other way. Targeting the lowest common denominator means you get the capabilities of the worst.

As a general rule, you should try to keep particle counts low. High numbers of particles just results in a blurry mush, while fewer particles allows your artwork to shine. Less is more and all that nonsensical gibberish.